“Hello, I’m Vernon Parker from the great state of Arizona. My wife Lisa and I raised two beautiful children here, Sonya and Ian. I’ve had the privilege to work for the people of my town as their mayor, and now I am seeking to be their voice in the House of Representatives, as part of the Phoenix area’s new Ninth Congressional District.

“Every day, when I go around asking folks for their vote, what they ask ME most is what I’m going to do about jobs. Here’s what I tell them.

“I tell them nothing is more important than getting the middle class back to work. The unemployment rate in our state is 8.3 percent, more than the national average and unacceptably high. That figure doesn’t take into account people who have given up looking for a job altogether. It doesn’t reflect the struggles of families trying to keep up with higher prices on everything from gas to groceries.

“I tell my neighbors it doesn’t have to be this way. We have employers who want to hire and workers who want to work, but government won’t get out of the way.

“So we need to start there. We need to do something about the fact that the United States – the Land of Opportunity – has the highest corporate tax rate in the world. That just pushes jobs away, overseas, to India, to China, to all our competitors. Instead, I agree with Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan that we need to stop all the looming tax hikes and develop a pro-growth tax code that brings jobs home and keeps jobs here.

“We need to do something about the fact that the president’s health care law is driving up costs, and in the process, making it harder for small businesses to expand and hire. Instead, let’s repeal ObamaCare and its $716 billion in Medicare cuts and replace it with common-sense reforms that protect Americans’ access to the care they need, from the doctor they choose, at a lower cost.

“While we’re at it, we need to look at reining in all the excessive red tape that is making it harder to live, work, hire, and do business.

“These ideas are in my jobs plan. And Republicans in Congress have advanced common-sense proposals to remove these government barriers to job creation in America.

“But President Obama? He puts government first. He actually wants to raise taxes on small businesses. He wants to keep our own energy resources under lock and key, including the Keystone XL pipeline. He wants more red tape, more spending that puts us more in debt to China, more of the same. No wonder Americans are asking ‘where are the jobs?’ No wonder jobs are fleeing overseas.

“Let’s bring those jobs home, back to America, back to local small businesses.

“There’s one more thing I tell the people I speak with here in Arizona. I tell them I’ve made restoring the American Dream my life’s work because without it, I wouldn’t be where I am today. See, I grew up in an underprivileged neighborhood replete with gangs, guns, and violence. I was the first in my family to attend college. When I didn’t have the money for law school, my mother and grandmother started cleaning houses again, and my brother gave me everything he had. All along, I would always tell myself that if I ever got out of the environment I grew up in, I would work hard to get others out and make it easier for them to have the same opportunities that have given me a chance to make a difference.

“That is why I am running for Congress, and it is why I know in my heart that, no matter how hard this work may be, we can get the job done. If we pull together, we can get the middle class back to work, we can restore America’s promise.

Vernon B. Parker, 52, is a rising star in the national Republican Party. Raised by his grandmother in a severely underprivileged neighborhood, Parker was able to escape the drugs and violence of his environment through love, education, and hard work.

Parker is the personification of the American Dream. He was able to escape poverty by putting himself through college and law school. Parker and his wife, Lisa, seek now to instill the same qualities in their own children as they come of age in one of the most challenging economic times in our history.

He was recently elected to serve a second term on the Paradise Valley Town Council. Parker served as Paradise Valley’s Mayor from 2008-2010. His upbringing taught a few things about living on a budget, and when the Great Recession hit no town was spared. He cut spending by 30%, reduced staff and streamlined government.

Previously, he served as Special Assistant to President George H. W. Bush. Parker was also nominated by President George W. Bush and unanimously confirmed with bipartisan support by the United States Senate, as an Assistant Secretary at the United States Department of Agriculture.

For two years, he led his congregation as a interim minister, and he also serves on the national Board of Directors for the Salvation Army, a group who provided clothes to Parker during childhood.

Parker and his wife, Lisa, live in Arizona with their two children, Sonya and Ian.

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Combining straight news from a wide variety of sources with insightful opinion from our team of writers, Western Free Press has provided daily coverage of political, economic, and social issues in Arizona and around the nation since 2010.

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